The Medical Academy of Montpellier inherited the energetic and progressive spirit of its prototype, the University of Cordova. It absorbed all the available learning of antiquity. It adopted the maxims and the methods of the great Arab surgeons and physicians of the Peninsula. Among its most celebrated professors were graduates of the School of Salerno. It utilized the talents and experience of famous practitioners of every country and of every creed. There the works of Hippocrates and Galen were translated from the Arabic, in which idiom they had been preserved, into the Latin, by which they were to be transmitted to posterity. There the learned disquisitions of Averroes, Avicenna, Rhazes, and Abulcasis were enriched with voluminous and invaluable commentaries. A long and thorough course of study was required to obtain the title of Doctor. The office of Chancellor was one of great dignity, and carried with it many privileges. It may well be imagined that ecclesiastical imposture could not flourish in the shadow of such an institution. Such was its influence, even with a class naturally hostile, that as early as the last half of the twelfth century the First and Second Councils of Montpellier prohibited all members of the clergy from teaching medicine, under severe penalties. The scientific character of the studies pursued in that city, and the success of those who profited by them, discredited the practice of shrine-cure and the imposition of relics. The theological odium attaching to the University was not less than that which had stigmatized kindred seats of learning among the Arabian infidels. Many works of its professors were publicly burned by the Inquisition. And yet no class of men was more highly esteemed by the orthodox sovereigns of Christendom than the graduates of the University of Montpellier. They were the friends and confidants of popes and kings. Their heretical principles were forgotten at the bedside of the sick and the afflicted. Arnold de Villanova was the physician of Clement V., of Peter III., King of Aragon, of Frederick II., Emperor of Germany. Guy de Chauliac was the regular medical adviser of Clement VI., of Innocent VI., of Urban V. While its greatest reputation is derived from its influence on medicine, the labors of the School of Montpellier were not confined to that science. They gave rise to many valuable contributions to various branches of literature. The astronomical researches of the Spanish Jew, Profatius, in 1300,--his tables of longitude; his calculations, which established the declination of the sun and the inclination of the earth’s axis, by means of which terrestrial motion was conclusively demonstrated, have not lost their authority in our time.